


Fixed Points

by Meggory



Category: Doctor Who (2005), The X-Files
Genre: Episode Tag: "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", Episode Tag: "Requiem", Episode Tag: "Rose", Episode Tag: "The End", Episode Tag: "The Truth", Episode: s04e16 The Waters of Mars, Episode: s06e02 Day of the Moon, Episode: s09e02 The Witch's Familiar, Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, Fixed Points in Time (Doctor Who), Gen, Time Lord Victorious, assassination of JFK, assassination of MLK, pretty canon compliant for a crossover, why do we keep meeting like this?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 03:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14275773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meggory/pseuds/Meggory
Summary: "Another body, I see," said the man, his voice holding a hint of mockery that set the Doctor's teeth on edge. "Your ship is the same, Doctor."Canton Delaware's eyes widened in surprise. "You two know each other?" he said, disbelieving."Of course not," replied the assassin, "but we do seem to keep running into each other, don't we?"





	Fixed Points

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mariyahs_Truth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mariyahs_Truth/gifts).



> Hey folks! Welcome to my first archived non-Star Wars fic. Mariyahs-truth wanted a story where the Doctor messes up Cancerman's plans...but it turns out things aren't that easy and this story went in another direction. Please enjoy my guesswork take on Thirteen, and note that I'm not working with any TXF canon past season ten, because *gestures broadly at the dumpster fire*

It was a fixed point in time, he realized even before he stepped out into the blinding sun. His body, new enough, jangled with the inevitability. Even the air, humid from morning rain, held the unmistakeable tang of immutable events, and he grimaced against both the metallic taste in his mouth and the knowledge that whatever happened here today, he was bound to observe—never interfere. Someone was going to die today; someone always died, and there was nothing he could do to change it.

Rose had turned him down, and the TARDIS had dropped him in the middle of a bloody fixed point in time. So much for suggesting to his ship that if he was going to be alone for the rest of eternity, she might try to cheer him up a little.

He could just leave. Turn around, close the door behind him and ask his ship to take him somewhere, anywhere, else. He hesitated, his heavy boot scuffing against the dirt, as a young man wearing a blue set of overalls with "City of Dallas Public Works" embroidered on the back slammed the door of his van and climbed _into_ the sewer outlet with a suspiciously long canvas bag and a flashlight.

The Doctor frowned. He cocked his head a little with his eyes closed, forcing himself to filter out the overwhelming sensory alarm caused by the fixed point. The sharp, acrid hint of ozone was the clearest indicator—it was 1963, a scant few weeks after the treaty banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere. Given the tilt of the planetary axis, the position of the sun, he pegged the date as November 22. A Friday in Dallas, a fixed point in time.

President John F. Kennedy would die today, and the last Time Lord in the universe, the Doctor, would stand by and allow it to happen.

Hitching his leather jacket against his shoulders, he clambered into the sewer outlet.

 

The young man crouched in the slice of sunlight edging through the street-level sewer inlet, head bent over a rifle. At the sound of the Doctor's heavy tread against the steel sewer, the man whipped a revolver out of his coveralls and pointed it at the Doctor. "Who are you?" the gunman asked, his voice tightly controlled.

"The Doctor," replied the Time Lord, hopping out of his crouch to brush past the young man. The inlet provided an awkward angle to view the street; crowds of people filled the sidewalk and the grassy park space opposite the sewer.

"You can't be here," replied the young man. His expression was hard, but in his eyes there was a flicker of fierce determination that the Doctor had seen in so many faces in so many wars.

"You don't exactly look like you're here to fix a leak," retorted the Doctor. He nodded at the rifle and added, "Or bring down the rat population."

"I can't let you walk out of here," said the man, levelling his revolver at the Doctor's left heart.

"I'd have to crawl," the Doctor replied with a snort. "Besides, I'm not here to stop you."

A flicker of surprise flashed over the man's face before he narrowed his eyes. "Did General Francis send you to shadow me?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Does it matter? I'm here, and you have a job to do."

The young man stared at him coldly, then replaced the revolver in a holder under his coveralls and turned back to his rifle. With every breath, the urgent feeling that the Doctor should leave warred with his first instinct to stop the imminent bloodshed. The sound of the rifle cocking made him flinch. Before the Doctor could say anything, the young man squeezed the trigger twice.

Ears ringing, the Doctor watched the man lower his rifle and sink down onto his heels. The man rested his head against the concrete wall, breathing fast, and the Doctor watched him. "Why did you do it?" the Doctor asked softly. The jangly feeling was ebbing, now.

"Following orders," said the young man without looking up.

His hearts hardened. So many things had been done, so many lives ruined, so much responsibility fettered away with that sentiment. Anger rose in him like bile. "You're so weak you let other people manipulate you into committing murder?"

The young man's head snapped up, eyes flashing. "I made my own choice," he hissed.

"You made a choice to murder and called it following orders," retorted the Doctor. "You're the worst of humanity."

The man scoffed and began disassembling his weapon with precise, practiced motions. "I do what is necessary," he stated, zipping up the bag and hoisting it over his shoulder.

As the man crawled back into the sewer, the Doctor called after him, "And who decides what is necessary?"

The answer would have been inaudible to another human. "I will."

 

****

 

He stumbled out of the TARDIS, desperate to escape the tolling of the cloister bell and the vision of Ood Sigma that kept haunting the corners of his eyes, and into a dense thicket of vegetation. The cloister bell thrummed in his veins, even outside his ship, and the Doctor's senses were slammed with new dread: a fixed point in time.

He would have staggered to the ground, if it were not for the man staring at him, holding a sniper rifle in one hand and pointing a revolver at the Time Lord in the other. That face, still young but now bearing hints of weariness around the lips and eyes, held eyes that had hardened since the Doctor last saw them. "You again," said the Doctor, running a hand through his messy hair. "Do you know how unusual it is to encounter the same person in two different fixed points in time?"

"Who the hell are you?" demanded the man in hushed tones, his grip on the revolver unwavering. He jutted his chin at the TARDIS. "What the hell is that?"

"Of course you don't remember me. Different face," sighed the Doctor. "I'm the Doctor. That's my ship."

The man's eyes narrowed. "There is no codename Doctor."

"I never said it was a codename." The Doctor gritted his teeth and managed to suppress the feeling of his nerves rippling through his body. This human was the instigator of another fixed point; the statistical probability was beyond astronomical. "Assassinating Kennedy's brother today?"

The man's eyes widened. "It's you."

The words were far flatter than the Doctor expected. "You don't seem particularly surprised."

"You're hardly the strangest thing I've encountered."

"That's…interesting." Taking a moment to lick the tip of his finger, the Doctor hummed. 1968, Memphis, certainly. It had rained earlier that day, and the earthy smells of spring contrasted with the late fall dust from their last encounter. "I don't usually meet people twice."

"Whatever you're here for, you can't stop me."

There was a motel beyond the shrubs, the two-storey kind that America built as if it were an architectural marvel. The Doctor tasted his finger once more, frowning. "It's a fixed point in time," he murmured.

"Everything is changeable."

The Doctor peered at him; everything about this was screaming _wrong, wrong, wrong_ at him, but maybe it was the cloister bells ringing doom in his blood or the electricity of the fixed point buzzing in his nerves—he straightened and leaned towards this strange, twice-met man. "I could change this moment and remake it in my own fashion," he boasted. "I am the Time Lord Victorious—"

_The Time Lord Victorious is wrong_ , Adelaide protested in his mind.

The shot rang out, and the man was disassembling his rifle before the Doctor could wrest control of himself. People were screaming from the motel balcony, some pointing in the wrong direction at a rooming house across the street and some hovering frantically over the still shape of a black man in a suit. "I should have stopped you," the Doctor whispered.

"The State Department doesn't have a file on you," replied the man as he loaded the rifle parts into a duffel bag. "I looked, after our first meeting. Francis didn't send you."

"Nobody sends me," scoffed the Doctor.

The man's lips tightened. "Then why are you here? Why were you there? You're clearly not here to stop me, so what, are you spying on me?" When the Doctor did not reply, the man scoffed and slung the duffel bag against his shoulder.

As the assassin moved through the bushes, the Doctor watched him go with balled fists. The feeling of the fixed point ebbed within him as the warning of the cloister bell called him to his death.

 

****

 

There had been someone lurking in the shadows of the Oval Office.

The Doctor's hand stilled on the TARDIS door, concentrating while ignoring the feeling of River watching him.

Someone familiar, someone he had seen before—more than once.

The Doctor flung the door open and marched back into the dimly lit office of the American President, hand poised for a decent fingerwag, and paused mid-step. "You," he snarled.

The assassin, still clean-shaven and wearing a decently-fitting dark suit and tie, flicked his cold eyes over the Doctor and took a drag of his cigarette. "Another body, I see," said the man, his voice holding a hint of mockery that set the Doctor's teeth on edge. "Your ship is the same, Doctor."

Canton Delaware's eyes widened in surprise. "You two know each other?" he said, disbelieving.

"Of course not," replied the assassin, "but we do seem to keep running into each other, don't we?"

The Doctor glared at the man, and through his anger, he finally noticed the hint of warning thrumming in his blood. A fixed point in time was in the making—but what? "Canton, get out."

The FBI agent, his face a mixture of indignant wariness, frowned. "Doctor, you don't understand, this is Mr. Spender, my liaison with the state department."

"Mr. Delaware," Spender said evenly, but his eyes were sharp as he glanced at Canton.

"Where's Dicky?" asked the Doctor, suddenly aware that Nixon was no longer occupying his office.

Canton shrugged. "A briefing, I assume. He said we could have the room."

"What are you up to?" The Doctor approached Spender and stood too close to the other man, who wore a mild expression of apathy and the smell of cigarette smoke like a disguise. "What are you doing here, now?"

"Why are you so concerned with my comings and goings, Doctor?" asked Spender, raising his cigarette to his lips. "Surely a shapeshifter with a ship like you has better things to do."

A frown tugged at Canton's lips. "Shapeshifter? Ship?" Bless the FBI agent for trying to keep the Doctor's secrets, because he gave a nervous laugh. "That's not possible."

The end of the cigarette glowed red, challenging and flippant. "The realm of what is possible is too terrifying for you to comprehend, Mr. Delaware," Spender said evenly. The Doctor's gaze did not stray from the assassin's face—

Spender was hiding something—surely multiple somethings, and that feeling of a rapidly approaching fixed point sapped his ability to just think clearly for half a moment…

The Doctor gambled; it did not happen quite as much in this incarnation as in the past, where improvisation and possibility made life worth living right up until improbability knocked four times on glass, but when this Doctor gambled, well, he made it count.

He struck, jabbing his fingers into Spender's sternum. The Doctor's voice became a tight rumble. "Whatever it is you're about to do, know one thing: _this planet is protected."_

The corners of Spender's mouth curled up minutely, and he leaned ever so slightly into the Doctor's rigid fingers before turning away. The assassin stubbed his cigarette into the ashtray on Nixon's desk and walked to the door. As he rested his fingers on the door handle, he said, "I'm the one protecting it, Doctor."

When the door clicked shut behind Spender, the Doctor squeezed his eyes shut. He had been wrong. The feeling of a fixed point in time was not of one approaching, but of one _receding._ Spender had been the eye of the event, carrying the tang along with his acrid cigarette smoke and the faint, chemical smell of acetate film.

"Doctor?" Canton laid a concerned hand on the Doctor's forearm.

"Canton," said the Doctor, staring hard at the door to the Oval Office, "do me a favour, yes?"

Canton snorted. "How many more favours do you need?"

Fishing around the transdimensional pocket in his tweed coat was always a frustrating exercise; the damned thing never worked the way it was supposed to, and usually all he pulled out was archeologically significant lint. Today, however, his fingers tugged out a film reel canister. "Keep this safe," instructed the Doctor. "Don't keep it secret. Show your grandkids, or your nieces and nephews, your second cousin's stepson, whoever."

Canton took the canister and brushed his fingers over the messy Gallifreyan hastily written on the label with a Sharpie. "What is this?"

"The moon landing," replied the Doctor. "The real one."

"Real—?"

"Just humour me, Canton. Oh, and send me a wedding invitation!"

 

****

 

He would not become someone else.

The Doctor staggered out of the TARDIS and into a dimly lit stairwell landing. Hanging onto the blue door in an effort to stay upright, he forced the regeneration energy that lit his veins on fire to ebb. The smell of old carpet and human urine hit his nose as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

At the bottom of the stairs, crumpled beneath a heavy, upturned wheelchair, lay a man. The Doctor could hear the laboured, whistling breathing. "Doctor," the man whispered, only loud enough for a Time Lord's ear.

Kneeling, the Doctor pushed the wheelchair off the man's broken body. "I'm not that kind of Doctor," he replied wryly.

The man exhaled and closed his eyes. "Now's your chance, Doctor. Do what you came to do."

Confused, the Doctor peered at the other man more closely. The iron grey hair, the lined face—surely they had never met before?

The wretched smell of cigarette smoke rose from the man as he shifted his arm.

Reeling, the Doctor scrambled back and stood over Spender. He ran a hand over his face, pressing words back into his mouth. "This isn't possible. I don't meet people like this—not people like you."

Two fixed points, two brutal and efficient assassinations, and another fixed point which the Doctor, too deeply distracted with concern for Amy Pond, should have investigated. Spender was dangerous, with concealed motives and cold eyes that made the Doctor's skin crawl.

Spender was also a frail, sick man about to die in front of the Doctor.

"I should leave you here," the Doctor hissed. "You murdered two good men in cold blood."

A scoff led to a wet, weak cough. "Only two? Saint Peter will be pleased."

The Doctor spun on his heel towards the TARDIS. He should go. He should let this monster die, let the Earth spin on without his dark deeds—

_A little boy stood in a desolate, grey field studded with Handmines, pleading for help._

Another force tugged on him, overwhelming the crackling regeneration energy within him, and the metallic tang coated his tongue.

Fixed point in time.

And this time, the Doctor was not merely a bystander.

_I'm not sure that any of that matters, friends, enemies. So long as there's mercy. Always mercy._ The words, spoken long ago but still by these lips to the child who would craft the destruction of the Time Lords, echoed in his head unbidden.

Bill would never let him leave a man to die like this. She would berate him, shame him, turn away as he just did.

Hearts clenching, the Doctor slowly turned back to Spender. The whistling of air in the human's trachea was higher pitched now. The Doctor's mouth tasted of iron and blood, the calling card of a fixed point in time.

"Why are you still here?" Spender wheezed, his fingers twitching against the carpet. "You want to watch me to make sure I actually expel my last breath? Smarter than they were."

"Why do we keep meeting?" whispered the Doctor.

"Fate's a bitch," replied Spender with a croaking laugh. "For both of us, I think. You're an old man now, too."

_Mercy_.

The Doctor pulled open the little panel on his ship and picked up the handset. "I need an ambulance," he said, and promptly replaced the phone on its cradle.

Spender, for the first time, actually let surprise wash over his face. "You're not letting me die?"

"No."

"You should."

_I don't have a choice_ , the Doctor wanted to say, but instead, he replied, "Consider it a life sentence."

Ambulance sirens wailed faintly in the distance. Spender said nothing. The Doctor hesitated on the threshold of the TARDIS. A niggling thought, surfacing after centuries of disuse, rose in the Doctor's mind, speaking with the voice of the one with the bowtie and the chin. "What did you do, that night in the Oval Office? What had you done?"

A surprised huff of air squealed through Spender's nose. "I kept the human race from panicking, Doctor. I kept the Cold War becoming nuclear apocalypse. All it took was a sound stage and an astronaut's suit."

Regeneration energy swelled within him, burning the last seconds' memory out of his mind, and the Doctor stumbled into the TARDIS, begging his ship for grace.

 

****

 

Parched air sucked the moisture from her skin like a convection oven. The Doctor immediately regretted stepping out of the TARDIS as the heavy taste of metal coated her tongue. Fixed point. She should leave. But on the other hand, where was the fun in th—

"Doctor, you've certainly changed," rasped a voice she could not forget, no matter how many regenerations she experienced. "And for the better."

She narrowed her eyes at the withered, ragged man propped up against the adobe wall of a pueblo. "Spender. You're slightly more alive than the last time we met."

A tiny smirk played across his thin lips as he raised his cigarette to the tracheotomy stoma buried in his throat. "Not for long."

The Doctor cocked her head, pushing out the sensory overload of the fixed point to catch the sound of rapidly approaching helicopters. "That's not the traffic 'copter," she remarked.

"My end is finally nigh," Spender told her. "Though I wonder if that ship of yours can sustain direct missile hits."

"Not the tiniest bit of you is getting in my ship," the Doctor snapped. "Not now, not ever."

"Come now, Doctor, you saved my life last time."

_Only because I had to_. "Four fixed points. Five, now," she breathed in realization. "No one has that many fixed points associated with them. Well, maybe me. I've underestimated your importance."

"That's the entirety of my charm and utility."

"No." The Doctor pulled herself up and glared at Spender. "I can stop you."

Spender scoffed. "Such hollow words, spoken by far more and far more intent people than you." He flicked ash from his cigarette. "I'm an old man waiting for this planet to die. There's nothing to stop. Besides, what will you do? Go back in time and kill me? We've already met here and now." He barked a raspy laugh. "Think of the paradox. It's absurd."

The memories were cracked, charred around the edges thanks to her last incarnation's stubborn refusal to just _let the damned regeneration happen_. She hoped she would not be so graceless when her time came. One flash of sensation—

Metal on his tongue. That same tang coated her teeth.

Fixed point, _again_.

Usually meant someone had to die.

The helicopter blades slashed through the air; their deep, pounding thrums shook the air. Out of the corner of her eye, the black, unmarked aircraft aluminum offered no reflective surfaces. The air shifted once more, for the Time Lady's benefit, whispering what time required of her.

The Doctor hesitated on the threshold of her TARDIS and glanced back at Spender. He watched her with a seemingly unconcerned expression, as if he felt the same whisper. "Good bye, Doctor."

She slammed the door behind her, running her hands through her blonde hair in frustration as she stalked towards the console. She leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the display monitor casing as weapon proximity warning alarms chirped with increasing shrillness.

The Time Lord Victorious, _that's for me to decide_ , warred with the promise of the Doctor, _never cruel or cowardly_.

Today, for once, it was both.

She drifted her fingertips over the console and activated the TARDIS' dematerialization sequence without extending the shields around the immediate vicinity.

The taste of blood faded from her tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> If you got this far, please drop me a line in the comments, even if it's just a keyboard smash! You can check out my other works here on AO3 or follow me over on the tumblr where I'm meggory84. Thanks to sanerontheinside for the quick beta to ensure I mashed English words together in a sensible way.


End file.
